Nespresso wins award for recycling project

Nespresso France has won ‘Best Environmental Initiative’ in ‘Trophées Défis RSE’ 2015 for supporting innovation in recycling technology and developing partnerships to improve the recycling of aluminium coffee capsules and other small-sized metal packages. Although aluminum is 100% recyclable, only 32% of household aluminium packaging is recycled in France. Because packaging sorting centres do not have suitable equipment, it is most often unable to process small packaging less than 7 centimetres.

Nespresso France also launched ‘Project Metal’ last year, which offers up to EUR 300 per tonne of aluminium packaging to incentivise sorting centres to invest in tools that can sort small aluminium packaging. The initiative has helped more than three million people in 500 communes across France to dispose of aluminium packaging using recycling bins.

The project builds on Nespresso France’s agreement with Eco-Emballages (the French ‘Green Dot’) and the Association of French mayors to include the collection of used Nespresso capsules in their collection system.

These initiatives are part of Nespresso’s new sustainability strategy, The Positive Cup, where it is expanding its capacity to recycle used aluminum capsules. Nespresso has installed more than 14,000 capsule collection points across 31 countries, and a home collection service is available in 15 markets.

Tim Brown, president and CEO of Nestlé Waters North America participated in a discussion on California’s water issues with a group of leading experts at a forum convened by The Atlantic on July 16. Together with Paul Grimwood, chairman and CEO of Nestlé USA, we gathered for a dinner roundtable to discuss the California drought and innovative ways to address the problem of water scarcity. Read Tim’s latest blog post on the event.